


Five Things the Doctor Won't Lick

by regala_electra



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-03
Updated: 2006-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:19:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regala_electra/pseuds/regala_electra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the Doctor fights clever viruses, defeats evil shrubbery, decides that someone else should be up to the task of uncovering a mystery, explains Suelgurrianei customs, and is at a loss for words. A comedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things the Doctor Won't Lick

5\. Rose's hair dye. It's tempered with the breezy scent of sugar blossoms from a quiet little farming planet called Toshing's Second 753 (Incorporated). As it's a planet known for their quality hair products and the Doctor's found that he's becoming rather fond of experimenting with his hair (this time around at least), well, they just had to pop in for a minute, defeat a body-hopping intelligent virus and all before tea time.

It's not a cloying scent, it's rather sweet like the first (and only) day of spring on the sparsely inhabited twin planets of the Galmetre star system (mmm, perhaps he better wander over there again, he's quite sure it's supposed to be a busy little system by around nowish).

Where was he?

Oh yes, the reason for not tasting the dye is its duplicitous nature. For yes, it is rather sweet and inviting when you catch the scent of it in the air, but one little drop of it on your tongue, and oh, it's evil really. You'll be stuck with a taste of putrid rot in your mouth for weeks on end.

Oddly enough, the taste can be counteracted by any basic shampoo formula – though it only works if you immediately swallow the shampoo after ingesting the essence of sugar blossoms. While the Doctor does have many skills, he isn't going to bother to mix up the correct amounts, for after all, there are so many other things to taste.

Like Rose's hair after a shower, when she's washed recently dyed hair. The Doctor sneaks closer than he ought to, nuzzles the top of her head, his mouth parting slightly and all he can taste is sweet and damp and Rose.

*

4\. Any ice cream that's come from Sector 28/ZetaF in the Quasar Eri quadrant. You lick one of those tempting treats and you'll spend the rest of your life (or in the Doctor's case, the rest of his regeneration), with a tied tongue. And he's not mincing words or prattling on about rubbish, honestly, _you'll have a tied-tongue for the rest of your life_. He tells Rose, jokingly, that they should pick up one for her mum.

She laughs and jabs him in the arm. He really should learn to avoid that, yet it seems that Tyler women are rather excellent at catching him off guard.

*

3\. Mickey Smith. The Doctor doesn't care about etiquette; that it might be rude to lick your travelling companion's former boyfriend (er, if it is _former_ , honestly, sometimes those two humans, they’re maddening).

Anyone who consumes that many pickled foods must have something off-putting in their biochemistry and the Doctor isn't clamoring to solve that mystery.

*

2\. Any textiles made of sangreeli fibers. It leads to a tie-dye situation that the Doctor has no patience for, this time around (possibly because some of his previous affections for a multitude of colour have led to him finding multi-coloured cloths far less amusing).

Also, for some reason, merchants who carry materials made with sangreeli fibers, have a _you lick it, you keep it_ policy and as Rose is learning, these fabrics stick to the skin for several hours before it completely disintegrates.

"When were you going to tell me my skirt was going to disappear?"

She hisses this to him as the Doctor is bartering for a replacement part for the TARDIS.

He stares at her knickers.

It really is a brilliant marketing maneuver. The Doctor may have to thwart the evil genius behind it. Once his tongue is no longer stuck to the roof of his mouth, unable to say anything, that might be just the dangerous peril to er, well, he doesn’t know what to say.

Hmm, being speechless this time around is rather odd.

*

1\. "What about the backs of toads?"

For all that the Doctor's been accused of going on to random subjects, he's really quite positive that humans yearn to be just as aggressively odd; that is, when they're not struggling to conform to pointless normalities and niceties.

"Do you honestly think that I'm a toad licker?"

Rose elects for silence, raising a single dark eyebrow.

"Well," the Doctor says, trying to pretend that he doesn't immediately have at least ten instances pop into his mind of when he might have licked a toad for a very good, or at least somewhat understandable, reason. "I might have done. All right? Now, I wouldn't lick a Suelgurrianei toad."

Feeling the matter closed, the Doctor turns back to the task at hand: to figuring out how to reverse the evil shrubbery currently trying to overwhelm the Panama Canal (which has just been opened; a marvel to technology and human ingenuity and a prominent mark of Imperialism and all that). This shrubbery has a mind of its own and the Doctor must defeat this green menace before it completely undermines a pivotal moment in mankind’s history.

He gingerly takes the sample that Rose had collected (and by _collected_ he means _the shrubbery that tried to close over Rose before she had managed to jump out of its threatening cheery green clutches_ ).

"Is that it, then? What, is it really poisonous then? No other deadly toads out there?"

"Oh, it's not poisonous, not by a long shot," the Doctor explains. "It’s just that it's not terribly polite and then they’ll pipe up, ' _Oi, what d'ye think you're doing there? Having a lick-see, eh? I'm calling the proper services I am and lodging a complaint, I am!_ ' And then you have to apologize and really, there's not point in it, if you need to get a Suelgurrianei toad to talk, you just have to ask its opinion on their favourite football team."

There's a quick bit of silence and success! The Doctor now can rid Panama of the deadly shrubbery for good.

"You know what," Rose begins to say, pleasantly dazed, "I would have wondered ages ago how toads could have a football team. Now, I'm just curious if they consider hopping a violation."

"Oh, it is a very grave violation, indeed," the Doctor says with a pleased nod. "Almost as bad as a stranger wandering in and licking them for no good reason."


End file.
